Music
by Cruelest Sea
Summary: Sometimes, friendship is a song only two can hear. One shots: Rallentando; Fermata; Crescendo; Pianissimo; Marcato; Al Niente.
1. Crescendo

_"It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful." - Benjamin Britten_

_**Crescendo**_

I'd known him for eight months before he let me hear his music.

I think even at the time I recognized the significance of that moment, what it meant for him to open up that part of his soul and spill it out for me, a corner hidden within him. I'd learn later I was the first person to ever hear it.

It wasn't just music to Hutch. I'd watch him after a hard case, after a homicide, someone we couldn't save, arriving moments too late, reach out and take his guitar and play. He'd pour his heart into it, every fiber of his being, binding everything he felt into the music. I could feel the day melt off him, sink into the music like a weight slipping from his neck into the sea.

I don't know when it stopped, only that I heard the music less as time passed, chords fading into silence, hummed notes replaced by empty stares.

I wish he'd cried when he found his broken guitar. I knew he wanted to, and I could have so easily reached out as we used to, held him and let him cry out all his tears. If only he'd crumbled that stone wall between us, let me inside again. But he only stood there for what seemed like an eternity, holding the splintered pieces against him like a child. I watched him walk over and throw them into the trash, fingers slip from the wood, release it. And it hurt, a giant fist slamming into my stomach. When he looked up his eyes were vacant...and dry.

He didn't get a new guitar after that. I pestered him about it a few times, dropped hints and even dragged him into a music shop once. After a while I stopped mentioning it.

There were times when I'd turn on the radio and I'd see something flicker in his eyes, a shallow whisper of the light I remember there. But it would vanish before I even spoke.

Its the morning we're playing ping-pong that I notice his fingers tapping against the paddle, a rhythm of the sound. I comment and regret it the instant his fingers still.

Its a month after the shooting and he comes into my hospital room with a new, shiny guitar in his hand and a paper in the other. He stands next to my bed, clears his throat like a child making a presentation in school. "I wrote a song." His voice is quiet, soft the way I remember when he talked about music. He's only played three notes when I realize why the rhythm sounds so familiar..it's the beat of our ping-pong game, a steady heartbeat beneath the notes. I listen in silence, watch as he plays, soul binding to the music, heart bleeding through the tune.

And if tears spring to my eyes while he plays...well, it's just the pain medication and nothing else.


	2. Pianissimo

_"A friend is one to whom you can pour out the contents of your heart, chaff and grain alike. Knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away." - unknown_

**_Pianissimo_**

If I had to think of a sound I identify with Starsky it's the sound of breathing. He can breathe so softly at times I think he's stopped, and others so loudly I know he could be heard on the next block. But it's the sound of life and I never take it for granted.

The first time I hear his breathing he's propped up against the car door, air coming in loud snores through his open mouth. It's a long all night stakeout..my first..and I'm still downing coffee hours after he drifts off. The next day I snap at him for sleeping and making me stay awake, and he only looks at me without speaking. It isn't until much later that he realize he slept because he trusted me enough to stand guard, and would have stayed awake if I'd trusted him enough to ask.

The second time I hear his breath he's gasping for air between laughter, pinned face down by Captain Dobey's kids. He wrestles his way up and tosses Rosie in the air, grinning at her shrieks of laughter. He's just a big kid at heart and I can't help but smile watching him.

The third time I hear his breath he's holding me against him, cradled on a hillside as a crew works to pry the car off the leg I can no longer feel. His breath is heavy, panting from running down the slope, gasping as the fear melts away. The sound is oddly comforting and I drift away.

The fourth time I hear his breathing I'm gasping for my own air, fighting to hang on. His hand grabs mine, eyes filled with agony above the mask. I hear his breath catch, hold until I drag another ragged gulp of air into my tortured lungs. Sometimes I wonder if that breath had never come if he'd have taken that next breath alone.

The next time I hear his breath he's slumped against his car, face tilted slightly upward, eyes closed. If it wasn't for the scarlet spilling from his chest, running down his back, trickling from his mouth, and the ragged intake of air I could mistake him for asleep. I land on my knees beside him, pavement cutting into my skin as I wrap my jacket around him, try to stop the blood. I feel him stop breathing as my hand trembles in front of his face. As if in a dream I ease him down, force my air into his lungs, gasps that barely lift his chest, my lungs breathing for him, my heart beating for two. It isn't until the paramedics come and take him from me that I taste the blood on my lips and know it's not a dream.

The last time I hear his breath it's soft, a whisper as he sleeps..natural, real sleep, eyes closed, pain lines brushed out of his face. He looks like a little boy lying there and I reach out and tuck the covers in around him without bothering to ask the nurse. His eyes flutter and he looks at me, a loopy smile touching his eyes. He drifts off again almost instantly and I sink into the chair beside him.

He won't wake again until morning but I'm content to sit here, to watch him sleep. And listen to the quiet music of his breathing.


	3. Marcato

_"But some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there." - Erma Bombeck_

**_Marcato_**

The first time I hear his heartbeat we've been partners for two months.

It's a simple drug bust that goes wrong and before I can go for my gun the kid has his out, aiming for my chest. I feel something slam into me as the gun discharges, sending me sprawling as our backup opens fire on the teen. My partner is lying heavily on my legs, and as I reach for him I feel the warm stickiness against my hands. I hear someone yelling for doctors, and don't even know it's my own voice. I put my head down over his chest, feel my breath catch when a heartbeat answers. "Hutch.." They lift him from me before I can finish his name, and I don't see him again for six hours as the doctors try to repair the damage, try to save his life. He lives, as good as new four months later, with only a scar to remember the incident by, the first of many. But I remember and I never complete his name again, almost as if I'm not sure I'll be able to finish.

The second time I hear his heartbeat I'm slumped against him on a rooftop, and he's holding me against his chest. I can feel his heart pounding as if making up for the feeble struggles of my own heart against the poison. I know that he knows I should be in a hospital but yet I need something more. If I'm dying I'd rather go here, with him holding me against the pain, than among strangers in a white room. It isn't until later that I realize the force of will it took for him to carry me down those stairs and leave me in that hospital alone.

The third time I hear his heartbeat I'm running toward the building, to where I saw him shot and tumble through the glass. The hand he reaches to me is blood-streaked but the pulse against my head is strong and even and I know it's going to be all right.

The next time I hear his heartbeat it's running beneath my own, a stronger beat that drowns out the silence when mine stops. I hear his heart jolt with mine, faltering, and somehow I know that if I don't pull through Hutch won't either. I feel myself come back to life, my heartbeat twined with his across a fading screen as I drift away.

The last time I hear his heartbeat he's slumped in the chair next to the bed, my hand held loosely in his, the pulse running from his wrist into mine. I'm still weak but healing and I lightly squeeze his hand, not enough to wake him but enough to let him know I'm here, that I'm not going away. It's then that I notice his heart pulses at the same rate as mine, almost as if was one heart beating instead of two. Maybe it is.


	4. Al Niente

_"I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear, and grief, and rage and love rise up at once, and with variety of pain distract me." - Joseph Addison_

_**Al Niente**_

I don't know how long I've been sitting here.

It's cold, a bitter cold that tears into my bones, feeding on the marrow. I'm too cold to shiver, too numb to pull my jacket close.

My knees are drawn to my chest, my arms crossed over me. But my head is up, eyes focused across the room.

I think I hear his voice and I turn toward the ever-widening silence. It's strangely dark in here, darker than it should be this time of day. Maybe there's a storm outside.

I try to concentrate, to remember how I got here and can't. I don't remember anything, not the day or the month or even why I'm in this building. Somewhere there's a feeling of being hunted, or perhaps being the hunter. I remember sounds before the silence came- guns firing, something hitting the ground. I lose focus again, drifting back in the white-darkness filling up my head.

Somewhere within that world I find him, see him as if from very far away, a few steps across a room, a few feet from my hands.

He's lying curled beside the wall, hands flung open to his sides, face set in an almost gentle expression. Only his legs look twisted, one foot bare, blue sneaker resting a short distance away. A faint breeze from under the warehouse door lifts the edges of his curls, tangles in them. I would do the same sometimes, comfort for him like a mother stroking a child's head, but drawing strength from it for myself. He looks asleep, resting like a little boy, but my blurred eyes see the scarlet halo outlining his body, laid out like the chalk lines drawn around a corpse.

I see him laughing, running along the beach. I see him at the birthday party, at the school dressed up and playing his part to the hilt. I see him cradling a kitten against his heart, tossing Rosie up in the air and hearing her laugh. I feel his hand holding mine, arms crushing me against his jacket. That's the way I want to see him, the only way I want it to be.

There's a sharp pain in my chest, lancing through me. I don't recall being shot, don't feel any blood on the hand I press there. I don't know why I would hurt.

I've been sitting here for ten minutes but I can't make myself get up. I'm not strong enough to stand alone. For now I just want to sit here, to replay the memories in my mind until I believe there will be more.

Because eventually I'll have to walk the distance across the room and discover what I already know.


	5. Fermata

**_Fermata_**

_"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."-C. S. Lewis_

It happens in an instant, in the space of time between a breath taken and a breath released, before another can be drawn to claim its place.

The sound is oddly quiet, a deadly whisper of lead escaping hot metal clutched in sweaty hands.

A hand goes to his chest, searching for a wound he will not find, as his eyes connect with his partner's, blue crashing into blue like the waves of a storm at sea.

And the next instant he sees his partner crumple, fold like a paper doll, and slide almost in slow motion down the wall to the ground of the filthy alley.

He wastes precious seconds tackling the teenager, cuffing him to the car, and shouting a frantic request for backup and an ambulance.

Somehow, he finds enough inner strength to walk the distance to the still form sprawled on the ground, to drop to his knees and clench the pale wrist for a pulse, to call a name infinitely more precious than his own in a raw whisper.

Somehow, he gathers the limp body against him, tightly, as if trying to merge two souls into one body to sustain them both.

If it wasn't for the crimson wetness draining from between his fingers pressed to the gaping hole in the almost motionless chest, soaking his shirt, his jeans, and even dripping onto blue sneakers, his partner might only be asleep, dozing off at the office after an all-night stakeout.

If it wasn't for the horrible lack of movement from a man seemingly always in motion, the almost tangible ebb of life from a person who fairly radiated it, he might only be resting.

Hutch makes no sound.

He sits, cradling the dying body, chin resting on the unruly mop of curls that give his partner an almost childish look, eyes fixed on something only he can see as the deadly scarlet runs like ribbons spilled from a child's hands.

He doesn't know how much time passes before the ambulance arrives.

And then Starsky is lifted from his arms, stolen from him, and placed on a stretcher.

The chrome doors close and Hutch cannot go, cannot follow.

The other officers take the teenager in, close the case.

Hutch goes home.

He pours himself a glass of alcohol and lets it burn its way down his throat and through the invisible hole in his chest, the wound mirroring his partner's.

He drags a chair over beside the phone and sinks into it, chin resting on folded hands.

He doesn't wash his hands, or change his shirt to remove his friend's blood.

He doesn't move from the chair and his eyes remain fixed on the phone like a drowning man watching a twig floating down the river.

Later, much later, when the phone rings and the voice on the other end tells him his partner is still alive, that's he's going to recover, he finally moves from the chair.

And alone, where no one can see and no one will ever know, Hutch cries.


	6. Rallentando

_"A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own." - Thomas Mann_

_**Rallentando**_

They tell me you went painlessly, your heart slowly running down like a clock, breath escaping in a final whisper, slipping away without ever waking up.

They told me you never knew what hit you, never realized it was the end. They read the full medical report to me- massive damage, internal hemorrage, torn lungs, shattered ribs, splintered heart.

They tell me all this as if it will comfort me, as if some knowledge of how you died will explain why you're not here, why you're gone and I'm still alive. I never understood that. You know. I never knew why people wanted to know the details of how someone died when all that mattered was that they weren't there anymore and no words would bring them back.

You thought I'd be angry, didn't you, buddy? Screaming at the world, at God, at the doctors, at anything and anyone that stole you from me. But I'm not. I can't feel anger, not with three holes carved into my heart, a hollow gap draining away everything I once cared about.

The captain thought I'd fall apart. I saw it in his eyes when the doctors let him tell me that morning, words painfully loud in the stillness of the hospital. He waited for me to go to pieces, to break down and sob like a child. I didn't. I just sat there, and didn't say a word. I made the arrangements later that day, even went in to see you, lying white and still on a slab. But I didn't touch you, didn't reach out and brush the curls, the cheek. I couldn't because you'd be cold and stiff and I can't think of you that way, don't want to think of you as anything but the way you were, a smile lighting up your face, eyes sparkling with life.

You thought I'd call in sick, take time off and lose myself in a bottle, in some town, didn't you? I didn't, just went to work the next day and kept on as I always had. They tell me I drive faster now, treat the criminals a bit rougher than I should, fill out paperwork like I expect a grade on it. I don't know because I don't notice what I do. Whole days go by that I can't remember and yet I still see that last day, our ping-pong game, that restaurant bet you never cashed in on, as clearly as if I could step into it, bring it all back and change what happened that day.

I'd step in front of the bullets this time, buddy, find out for myself if it hurt. I don't think it would because I'd know that I was saving you.

If you had to die that day we should have gone out in a blaze of glory, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid like we used to joke about. Did we really laugh back then, laugh like there was no suffering, no pain, no loneliness? Were we really that content once, that light of heart? I can't remember.

We should have died together, facing death as we did life, low and high, left and right of the door. Me and thee, remember?

I don't understand and I know I never will. I don't understand so many things but there's one that keeps coming back, a single question hammering itself against my brain, a question that has no answer.

Why are you the only one who gets to die?


End file.
